Ruonakoski Erika, Tutkija/Researcher

Title and positionDocent in Philosophy, experienced researcher in Despair and Time, project funded by Kone Foundation.

Areas of InterestMy areas of interest are phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty, Husserl) and existentialism (Beauvoir, Sartre). The themes I am particularly interested in are intersubjectivity, embodiment, temporality, and the human-animal relationship.

Research AreasMy current project Despair and Time situates the question of despair in a political context and discusses it as a crisis of future-orientation. I ask: how does destructiveness in intersubjective relationships interfere with one's ability to project oneself towards the future, and what kind of dynamics are involved in such cases at the personal and political levels? Before this project I have written on alienation and inclusion in learning philosophy (project Gender and Philosophy), the links between androcentrism and anthropocentrism in existentialism (Project and Possibility: Beauvoirian Postanthropocentric Existentialism), on intersubjectivity in the reading experience and the possibility of empathising with animals in literature (Empathising with the Non-Human Other in Ancient Greek Literature), and on the human experience of non-human animals (doctoral dissertation).

The Relevance and Benefits of My ResearchAll of my research deals with areas that, in my view, have not been researched adequately due to implicit biases within philosophy or, more generally, in the society, and which are intertwined with different kinds of structures of inequity. Rather than aiming at straightforward moral or political statements, however, my research elucidates the problems at hand at an existential level, hence providing the readers a possibility to rethink them through their own experiences.